Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited New Answers to Old Questions

Joanna Blaszczak, Anastasia Giannakidou, Dorota Klimek-Jankowska, Krzysztof Migdalski

ISBN 10: 022636352X / ISBN 13: 9780226363523

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2017

About this Item

Seller Inventory # E-9780226363523-2-2

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited New Answers to Old Questions
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022636352X
• ISBN 13: 9780226363523
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very good

About this title

Synopsis

Over the past several decades, linguistic theorizing of tense, aspect, and mood (TAM), along with a strongly growing body of crosslinguistic studies, has revealed complexity in the data that challenges traditional distinctions and treatments of these categories. Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited argues that it’s time to revisit our conventional assumptions and reconsider our foundational questions: What exactly is a linguistic category? What kinds of categories do labels such as “subjunctive,” “imperative,” “future,” and “modality” truly refer to? In short, how categorical are categories?

Current literature assumes a straightforward link between grammatical category and semantic function, and descriptions of well-studied languages have cultivated a sense of predictability in patterns over time. As the editors and contributors of Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited prove, however, this predictability and stability vanish in the study of lesser-known patterns and languages. The ten provocative essays gathered here present fascinating cutting-edge research demonstrating that the traditional grammatical distinctions are ultimately fluid—and perhaps even illusory. Developing groundbreaking and highly original theories, the contributors in this volume seek to unravel more general, fundamental principles of TAM that can help us better understand the nature of linguistic representations.
 

About the Author

Anastasia Giannakidou is the Frank J. McLoraine professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Polarity Sensitivity as Nonveridical Dependency and coeditor, inter alia, of Mood, Aspect, Modality Revisited, also published by the University of Chicago Press.